Patriots' performance in close games is falling short

PAUL KENYON

Tuesday

Sep 25, 2012 at 3:15 PM

Two close losses in a row, such as the Patriots have suffered in the last two weeks, are not enough to be considered a trend.

Two close losses in a row, such as the Patriots have suffered in the last two weeks, are not enough to be considered a trend. However, the compilation of results over the last four seasons is enough to show that the Pats could use some improvement in being able to win close games.

The Patriots have great success beating up on teams. Going back to 2009, 40 of the 56 games the team has played (including the postseason) have been decided by six points or more. New England is 32-8, an .800 winning percentage, in those games.

The record is not nearly as sparkling in tight games, those decided by five points or fewer.

Including the one-point loss to Baltimore Sunday night, and the two-point setback against Arizona the previous week, the Pats have fallen to a pedestrian 8-8 in close games over the last four years. It is not the type of record that usually produces championships.

The uneven performances can produce some misleading statistics, and they have through three weeks this season. The Pats are in the top 10 in the league ó exactly 10th, actually ó in both scoring and scoring defense. They are averaging 27.3 points and allowing 21.3. Yet, as coach Bill Belichick has pointed out more than once, statistics are for losers. And right now, the only statistic that matters for New England is this: for the first time in 145 games, when someone looks at the standings, they see New England with more losses than victories.

The players are coaches obviously are aware of what has been happening.

"We had a chance to win it. We just didnít play well when we needed to," quarterback Tom Brady said. "Certainly, weíve got to play our best when it means the most. We need to start winning close games."

"Collectively, weíre a couple plays short of having a couple more wins," Belichick said, "but we donít. We have to do a better job."

The latest loss was especially tough to take, since the Pats led by nine in the fourth quarter. Even after Baltimore scored, New England had the ball with a chance to run out the remaining time, but could not do it.

"To think that weíd lose that game, certainly would not be the outcome we would have thought or liked or hoped for," Brady said Tuesday in his weekly appearance on WEEI radio. "But thatís the situation weíre in, so weíve got to figure out a way to do better so we can start winning those close games."

Brady said the subject is a regular conversation topic between him and his teammates.

"We talk about it every week," he said. "We talk about that situation, how weíre going to run the clock out. It just comes down to execution. We got in too many long yardage situations in the fourth quarter. ... You hate to be in those situation and we were. They took advantage and we didnít."

While the Patriots piled up more than 400 yards in offense against a defense considered to be among the best in the league, New England could muster only 37 yards and three points in the final quarter.

"We did enough good things to put ourselves in a good position, ahead in the fourth quarter and all of that," Belichick said. "But we just couldnít do all the things we needed to do at the end of the game to win it. Thatís disappointing. We work awfully hard on those things and we just came up short. I have to do a better job. We all have to do a better job."

Offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels spoke Tuesday about how he handled the play calling in the fourth quarter against the Ravens.

"We always try to go out there and do the right thing on every series, whether it be the end of the game or the beginning of the game. I think our group on offense, there were some things that we did better against Baltimore and then there are definitely some things that certainly at this point in the season we still need to improve on," McDaniels said.

"I always come out of the game and say, ĎMaybe if I didnít make that call, or maybe if I made another call it couldíve helped the situation.í Iím sure that there are always things we can do better on the field once the call has been made too. I think itís a collective effort. Youíre always trying to run what gives your team the best chance to be successful and the players are obviously trying to execute it to make it go. We just didnít do enough offensively to finish the game and we didnít do enough offensively to end the game with the ball there at the end. We need to improve in that situation."

The inability to finish two drives that reached the red zone hurt, McDaniels agreed. But Baltimore had something to do with that.

"When you get in the red zone you always want to score touchdowns. Thatís our goal. We only go out there for one reason on offense and thatís to try to score seven points every time we possess the ball,íí he said. ``Unfortunately we had a couple situations there where we didnít. I think we were close in both cases. I thought [Ed] Reed made a great play on the post route to Julian [Edelman]. That was a bang-bang play and heís a great player that made a great play on that particular snap and prevented us from scoring by separating the ball.

"Then the other one was when we ended up with the ball at the two after the third down completion and I thought they made a couple of good plays in that series.

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